The government has announced a £30m ‘walking watch’ fund designed to help pay for the costs of installing fire alarms in high-rise buildings wrapped in cladding.

This, it says, will remove the need for “costly interim safety measures”, including waking watches, which cost an average of £137 per month for each leaseholder.

The fund will be made available in January.

Alongside this, Westminster has extended the deadline for building owners to apply for the £1bn building safety fund by six months to 30 June 2021.

It reiterates that the building industry “must contribute towards the costs of making these homes safe once more, to set right decades of unsafe practices.”

Housing secretary Robert Jenrick says: “I’m confident that this will make a real difference to worried leaseholders up and down the country this Christmas.

“We have continued to prioritise the removal of unsafe ACM cladding throughout the pandemic and expect around 95 per cent of remediation work will have been completed or be underway by the end of this year.”

National fire chiefs council chair Roy Wilsher adds: “It has been our firm and long held expectation that building owners should move to install common fire alarms as quickly as possible and this funding is a positive step.”